The Color Cornell event with Ferra was a nice way to wind down during the busy school year. I think Ferra had a really good idea for a virtual coloring event. We “colored” by filling cells in with pre-selected colors to match pictures of Cornell’s campus. In all honesty, coloring in Google Sheets doesn’t exactly match the satisfaction of physically coloring in with a pencil, crayon, or paintbrush, but of course, in our circumstances, I’d say it was a really smart adjustment.

Looking at beautiful pictures of Cornell’s campus made me feel a little bit wistful. I just transferred to Cornell and I was really excited to live on the beautiful campus and enjoy the grand architecture and picturesque views, but with my classes being online and the buildings being much less accessible, I feel that I have yet to experience that moment of awe. Right now it feels like campus is just a lot of grass, the slope, and some stunning gothic facades, but I know that it is really much more than that and I am eager to see it in all its glory. I am very much a person who needs physical presence and experiences, so I am very much looking forward to the day we can all be together again.

When we didn’t get an email about supplies in our mailbox I was really confused. I did not know how to do art online and was intrigued. I thought possibly we would do art together and just be on Zoom. It turns out that this art is on Zoom, yes, but using excel!! It was awesome to just relax and enjoy other people. Especially on such a beautiful day where you can appreciate the architecture and magic of Cornell’s campus. I love art and talking with other Rose Scholars about art and the election. Through my window all day I could hear people whooping and cheering. It really was a joyful day made brighter by the addition of art.

During this event, we were assigned an image to try to color on google sheets using just the cells and filling them with the appropriate colors. The images were all different buildings on Cornell campus. The building that I was assigned was a very fancy and edgy design. Although it was beautiful, I could not picture how I could possibly recreate this image using a bunch of boxes, especially since the building had a lot of curves and smaller details. However, this did teach me some problem solving skills because when me and my partner got stuck, we somehow figured out how to make the drawing look at least something like the image we were given.

The Cornell-themed coloring session was completely different from what I expected. I really enjoyed recreating a photo of Cornell’s campus. I really enjoyed the excel part of coloring because I didn’t even know you could do this on excel. My group and I also had a great conversation surrounding the election and future careers. The entire experience was very relaxing and I enjoyed meeting new people. At the end, we all presented our coloring and it was interesting to see what the other groups came up with since we went for a more abstract route.

At first, I thought this workshop was going to just the usual coloring involving paper and coloring utensils, but I was really surprised to hear that we would be coloring through excel. I have used excel for many of my classes and have thought of it as a means to solve problems and organize, so it was really fun to see that it could be used for more fun activities. It was really difficult at first with the time limit because only one cell could hold a color that corresponded to the assigned picture and resulted in very blocky replicas of the pictures. However, it was a lot of fun and wouldn’t mind doing this again!

I really enjoyed this coloring session. It was a great way to destress from studying for my semi-finals. I never thought about coloring with excel cells before but this innovative technique was very creative. I also enjoyed talking too all the people in my group and figuring out a way to illustrate the slope using excel cells. I would love to do this activity again with other landscapes.

It was therapeutic to “google sheets color” my stress away, especially on a beautiful day where there was excitement in the air after the victory in this year’s presidential election. In this activity, it was made into group work as two other people joined me in coloring. Although my group made our picture “abstract,” it was all laughs as we presented our work to the rest of the groups. I had fun coloring and having a conversation with them. It was also very enlightening to see what the other groups had in store as they made their pieces closely resemble the other buildings on campus.

It has been quite a crazy week. As everyone ran outside to enjoy the unnaturally warm weather or celebrate the election’s results, I preferred to stay in the comfort of my room and make art on Microsoft Excel with other Rose Scholars. In my small group we candidly talked about ourselves, Thanksgiving, the election, and anything in between. We quickly recreated an abstract image of Cornell’s Vet School spent most of the time relishing in the positive vibes of the day. Unlike any other event, I felt like I really connected with other Cornellians and a sense of community that I think everyone has been deprived of this academic semester. It may be only today, but I had a lot of fun being able to let loose, forget about my worries, and make something on one of the most emotionally charged days of the year.

This Saturday afternoon, I joined other members of Rose and competed in a little coloring competition. Joining the event, I was not expecting that we were going to be coloring with Excel. It was something I had never done before, but was very excited to attempt. Starting it off, with my group attempting to recreate a picture from Cornell’s campus, it was much harder than expected. It reminded me of a paint by numbers, but where there are no numbers so you have to figure out what color to use. Despite this, it was actually a lot of fun to do! I enjoyed working with my group, meeting new people, and found the coloring to be quite relaxing. I’m also pretty happy with how it turned out! Can you guess what our drawing is?